Project Title: The Effects of Various Macromolecules on Biogas Production Efficiency in Anaerobic Digestion
BASIS Advisor: Dr. Grove
Internship Location: University of Maryland, NES Lab
Onsite Mentor: Dr. Guangbin Li
The purpose of my research is to investigate ways to curb the effects of plastics on anaerobic digestion processes. Anaerobic digestion (AD), in these cases, takes wastewater and activated sludge as input, and through a complicated biochemical process, produces methane gas – a renewable energy – as output. The abundance of plastics and microplastics in wastewater, however, have shown to have negative effects on the ability to produce natural gas from AD. By finding effective treatments to negate the plastics, energy could be produced more efficiently, and in greater quantities. Finding ways to reduce the effects of plastics on AD could lead to an increase in clean energy gained through AD. This investigation aims to explore the impacts of plastics in wastewater sludge treated with AD technologies. Prior research has been done to investigate these impacts on a larger scale, but this research aims to analyze the issue on a closer biochemical level by first understanding what are the inhibitory properties of plastic that cause harm to the AD process, and later on asking if there are ways to modify the AD process to mitigate the effects of plastics. In conducting this research, I hope to investigate potential solutions to this problem, stepping beyond simply identifying and investigating it. I will be working at the Nutrient Energy Smart (NES) lab located at the University of Maryland.
My Posts
Week 9, Part 2 (5/9-5/13)
May 13, 2022
ExoForce Friday While I unfortunately cannot write as much as I would like about the specifics of what I am doing, I can say that this week has been a bit quieter. Pretty much all of the coding that I was assigned happened on one day, during one long grind session. Sometimes I don’t like […]
Week 9, Part 1 (5/9-5/13)
May 12, 2022
UMD Wednesday I did not get a chance to write about yesterday, since I got the COVID booster the day before and went to rest as soon as I got home, but this week has so far been very similar to last week. I have/will be conducting my annamox experiment over the course of three […]
Week 8, Part 2 (5/2-5/6)
May 08, 2022
ExoForce Tuesday Writing this while on UMD campus, since I have a lot of time to kill (read Wk8 pt.1!), but my last meeting for internship-related stuff was yesterday morning. Towards the end of the meeting, my mentor and I briefly discussed what would be/wouldn’t be allowed to be published on these entries, and we […]
Week 8, Part 1 (5/2-5/6)
May 05, 2022
UMD Tuesday Today, I have started preparing for my methanogenesis experiments to take place tomorrow. I arrived at the lab around 10am, and as of writing right now, it is 3:00pm. Last week I spent a lot of time rewriting my experimental protocol, and although there were still a few holes which I have not […]
Week 7, Part 2 (4/25-4/29)
May 01, 2022
ExoForce Unfortunately, I could not post a part 2 last week, since I was still getting approval to post as I signed an NDA upon joining. Even now, I have only gained permission to talk about some things, not including specifics about the algorithms I’m coding. I have been coding a lot for ExoForce recently, […]
Week 7, Part 1 (4/25 – 4/29)
Apr 29, 2022
UMD This week I analyzed the data I produced last week, and began making plans for my next experiments. Data analysis involved reading the charts produced from the GC computer. Unfortunately, after taking a closer look at the results I produced, it turns out that my experiment was a failure, as no methane gas was […]
Week 6, Part 1 (4/20-21)
Apr 25, 2022
Yesterday and today (Wed+Thurs) have been long days at the NES lab, so I figured that for this week, I would split my blogs into two — one for my work at UMD, and the other for my internship work. Wednesday’s work started around 12:00pm and ended around 6:15pm. Because I planned on conducting my […]
Week 5 (4/11-4/15)
Apr 18, 2022
Progress has still been slow, but within this week I will be starting the more concrete work of both my internship and research. Some interesting things to come! UMD We ordered the lab-use MPs and can use them once they ship. This Thursday and Friday, I drove up to Maryland to work in the lab […]
Week 2 (3/14-18)
Mar 18, 2022
This week has been another week of mostly preparation for the future — although, some interesting things have been happening. For this blog and future blogs, I will divide them into three sections. The first will talk about my work at UMD, the second will talk about my work with ExoForce, and the third will […]
Week 1 (3/7-11)
Mar 11, 2022
Hello! My name is Spencer Huang, and welcome to my senior project blog. For the next ten weeks, I will be both a researcher at the University of Maryland’s Nutrient, Energy, Smart (NES) Lab, and an intern at ExoForce Robotics. Within these blog posts, I will talk about the work and research I am doing […]